Hedera: the beta version of the mainnet coming soon

Hedera Hashgraph has announced the plan to launch the beta of the mainnet on September 16th.

In an official blog post, the Hedera team reveals that the platform will be open to developers thanks to the release of open-source code for a mirror node; after that, the distribution of tokens will also start. 

The Open Access (OA) to the mainnet beta will take place on Monday, September 16th, 2019 and will also mark the beginning of the distribution of the HBAR tokens, which will be released to participants through the Simple Agreements for Future Tokens (SAFTs) with which the company raised $124 million in 2018.

Hedera Hashgraph is a distributed, enterprise-class public accounting platform that allows any developer to create decentralised applications (dApps). The code of the mirror node will be released as open-source, allowing anyone to run it independently. 

The mirror nodes of the Hedera network provide access to all consensus decisions and the status of the distributed ledger. Although they do not participate in the consensus, they provide the public transaction ledger and grant the owner the flexibility to choose what to keep and for how long. 

The goal is to become the most decentralised permissionless public network on a large scale, which is why the company is taking a strategic approach with a long-term token distribution program. 

At the moment, however, it is still a public permissioned network, as only a few can run the nodes and manage the consensus. Before becoming permissionless and allowing anyone to become a node, Hedera will distribute the tokens in several tranches over a long period of time. The aim is to prevent malicious people from accumulating tokens and monopolising the network. 

After OA, the Hedera network will offer three services: the cryptocurrency, limited to 10,000 transactions per second, smart contracts and the file service, both reduced to 10 transactions per second. 

These limitations would serve to distribute the services in a controlled and responsible manner, but Hedera plans to increase the speed in the coming months. 

Hedera Hashgraph’s co-founder and CEO, Mance Harmon, said: 

“With Open Access, we are excited to welcome any and all to join the hundreds of third-party developers already building decentralized applications on our platform. Open Access also marks the next step in our journey to become the industry’s most decentralized, permissionless, public network. At the same time that our mirror nodes are becoming open source and accessible to all, we’re also beginning a careful, responsible coin distribution process”.

Hedera Hashgraph’s other co-founder and chief scientist, Leemon Baird, added:

 “The creation of the trust layer of the internet requires a measured, long-term rollout with responsible stewards, empowered individuals, and a slow coin distribution. Hedera Hashgraph is taking a thoughtful approach to this deployment and we see interest in our protocol by both enterprises and developers as a strong endorsement of our strategy”.